Kansas City Royals Drop One Spot In Power Rankings

Another week of Kansas City Royals baseball has come and gone, and the team fared very well in the power rankings this week. Kyle Franzoni at FanSided.com ranked the Royals in the third spot in his most recent edition. Despite Kansas City dropping one spot, third place is nothing to spit on this early on in the season (Note: These rankings were written on Wednesday afternoon)

"“It was tough to knock down the Royals, especially considering they’ve continued to played exemplary baseball and sport the best run differential in the game. However, two losses to the Minnesota Twins don’t make a good case. What more can you say about the unheralded contributions of Paulo Orlando?”"

Franzoni had a good enough reason to bump the Royals down, as they did lose their only series so far last week against the Minnesota Twins. Since then, however, Kansas City has gone an impressive 4-2. The first loss came over the weekend to the Oakland Athletics in an ugly series where players were intentionally getting hit, benches were clearing, and managers and players were getting tossed.

That ugly series led to Kelvin Herrera receiving a five-game suspension for throwing behind Athletics third baseman Brett Lawrie, in a story that just won’t go away. Herrera appealed the suspension, which will buy him a few more weeks should the suspension still go through. The Royals came away with that series though, two games to one (one in an emotional comeback).

The second loss came against the Twins, whom the Royals have dropped three games to. In case you’re not doing the math, three of the Royals’ four losses have been to the Twins. Not exactly wonderful thinking about that, but overall the Royals have been playing great baseball. They’ve only lost one series so far.

The other two games against Minnesota went in the Kansas City Royals’ favor, and they were able to come from behind in both victories. Tuesday night’s victory was the most impressive, as the Royals had a 4-1 lead, and then lost it when Jason Vargas ran out of gas in the sixth. Still though, the Royals clawed their way back in the eighth inning and eventually won the game 6-5 to take the series from the Twins.

As for the rest of the power rankings, fellow AL Central member Detroit is holding down the fort at number one. The Tigers have been neck and neck with Kansas City all season long, but Franzoni sees them as the better team despite both teams posting an 11-4 record. The Los Angeles Dodgers are ranked second, the St. Louis Cardinals fourth, and the New York Mets come in at fifth. So far, the Mets are the most surprising team of the season, at least in my opinion.

This series with the Twins is just the beginning of a long stretch of AL Central match-ups for the Kansas City Royals. The team will hit the road for a four-game series against the White Sox starting on Thursday, then play a three-game series in Cleveland, before returning to Kauffman Stadium for the long awaited four-game series against the Detroit Tigers to finish up the month of April and take us into May.

These next few games are not going to be a cakewalk, but I have faith that the boys in blue can continue to do what they do best – win games!

Next: Brett Lawrie Whines About Royals Fans

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